Tuesday, 1 September 2009

An Excellent Weekend

The warning signs were there early last week. My mind had entered a mild form of delirium. I was quite excited at the thought of spending the weekend with my Wife.

On Monday and Tuesday I exploded three bicycle tyre inner tubes in the fruitless pursuit of maintaining our cycle fleet. Needless to say we have three very clean bicycles. Only one is functioning. But they look very effective.

On Tuesday I also had the clumbisidity to spill rust remover on our teak deck. This left a series of largely conspicuous drip marks. I have cleaned them in vain and am yet to remove them effectively.

On Thursday I discovered a large hole in one of our cushions. Though I am probably not to blame I discovered it and like Christopher Columbus I shall suffer for it.

On Friday I felt deliciously light headed. So much so that I was babbling to imaginary friends and blabbering to real ones.

On Friday evening I sat in the train station grinning gleefully at the beach vendors, sun burned tourists and stray rubbish. My Wife would be with me soon......I am quite fond of my Wife. She is a perfect foil to my eccentricities and if anyone should be bequeathing me with advice it should be her. I was quite happy to see her off the train and into my arms.

After finding a suitable Hotel we visited one of Viareggio's many cocktail bars and drank good cocktails listening to incredibly bad live music. It was more akin to dead music. It would have woken up the dead and nearly killed the living.

We then went to the Library restaurant and dined on lobster. How decadent it is to dine on lobster supping on wine you can not pronounce outside a library? Convenient evidence you can buy culture.

We then swaggered haphazardly throughout the town. I swaggered with the knowing air of someone who knows Viareggio a little more than than my Wife. We did ride our bicycles to my local pub at one point. There was a reason for this but it escaped us when we arrived.

Saturday was a day of reflection. My reflection was particularly scary on Saturday morning. I am blaming it on the stupid amount of coffee we drank the night before. It had nothing to do with the cocktails. We did purchase two new laptops and my Wife had a massage.

Sunday was spent aboard my work place. We drank gin and juice in the sun, pretended we were guests and generally worked as hard as one does on a Sunday. No hip hop was listened too sadly. I was not feeling enough Puff.

Monday was a day of action. I hired a vehicle and we set off to to visit Lucca and Florence. This was a bit ambitious in retrospect but we will cover that off later. Lucca is a well preserved Roman town with a beautiful wall. When I settle down I will choose a place with a moat or decent wall.

We were in Lucca for 2 hours. We consumed a meal of some significance beside this interesting free standing sculpture.

Sadly with time encroaching we began our flight to Florence. We knocked off Angkor Watt in a couple of days, we could do Florence in two hours!

The machinations of a city under a constant tourist siege got the better of us. Early into our sightseeing it was decided that we should abandon all hope of seeing anything and go shopping. The shopping was good. I do enjoy lounging on an antique couch amongst a hippopotamus and chandelier whilst my Wife tries on clothes.

I was dismayed to see mannequins proudly wearing winter clothes.

I don't think they are very happy winter is on its way either.

The drive home to Viareggio was not without adventure. Our car decided it would like to squeeze in Rome. Rome was not seen in a day.